


calling me tonight

by miabicicletta



Series: Lonesome Dreams [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: AU, Alternate Ending - Series Three, Angst, F/M, imaginary conversations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-05
Updated: 2014-08-05
Packaged: 2018-02-11 20:44:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2082531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miabicicletta/pseuds/miabicicletta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I don’t think you can help me this time, Molly,” he says. </p><p>AU where the broadcast message never happened, and Sherlock Holmes was never given a reprieve.</p>
            </blockquote>





	calling me tonight

**Author's Note:**

> Unbeta-ed late night fic. Title comes from the song **[Sleepless Streets by Youngblood Hawke](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbC-TGhYDd4)**. A pretty song, but one that makes me very sad.

His breath comes shallower now, puffing out in little white clouds that dissipate into the alpine darkness. The frozen cement saps what little remaining energy he has, pulling heat and strength from already weakened limbs. His head lolls against the mesh of poorly-mixed concrete and rebar, spots playing out before his eyes. He coughs and tastes blood in his mouth. 

“Yeah. That’s a bit not good,” John Watson says. John Watson, who is not here. 

“Probably not,” Sherlock Holmes answers. 

“Shot then?” Not-Actual-John asks.

“Among other things,” he manages. His fists clench. He bites back on the pain, wills it down, blinking rapidly, trying to focus. 

“Becoming a habit with you. And we know what those are like.” 

“Mmm, bad, generally speaking.”

“Very,” Jon says.

“You’re in London. Shouldn’t be...here,” Sherlock says. He coughs again, a dry wracking that yields worryingly foamy copper-bright spittle. 

“Occurred to me. You. Us. Didn’t think you’d mind,” John says, and sits on his left side, elbows on his knees. Five months, four days have passed since their parting on the tarmac outside London. “Mycroft’s predictions have proved accurate as ever, looks like.” 

He smirks as best he can, glances at his friend. His friend who is not here. "A fact of which I am rather _painfully_ aware.” 

John snorts, shaking his head. 

In London, in the world he’ll never see again, Real John is a father now. A father to a daughter who is at present some three months old. She will be small and pink and the love of her parents’ life, Sherlock Holmes knows for a fact. What else she is, what she will become, he can only surmise. 

In his mind palace of endless halls of many doors, some locked, some forgotten, there is a room. A room he had once readied for the arrival of a small human who would soon appear on the periphery of his life—a girl he will never know. One he can only imagine. 

He sees a child both bright and brave, all her mother’s ferocity with a father wrapped around her finger. She will never want for love in her life, which will be sunny and untroubled, and in it, she utterly adored. He imagines a wild and precocious imagination, and a taste for adventure fostered by tales of her father’s legendary misadventures. A quick smile, an easy laugh. All things children should be, and for whom all things are possible. 

He will never meet John and Mary's Watson's daughter. 

He will, in point of fact, never even know her name. 

“The baby.” He coughs again, paining bursting through him is like a crack of lightning. Hot white fire burns through his bones. 

“Yes?” 

“Take care of her. And Mary. And—” 

He cannot finish. A precise, terrible ache erupts through him, worse than anything his shattered physical form can bear. 

John shakes his head. Even the figment of him loyal to the last, refusing to acknowledge the certainty of his demise. “Nope. Not doing that. Not calling it now. Not like this, Sherlock. Remind me: Are you or are you not always using that big bloody brain to find a way out of a mess? Getting lazy, mate. Besides, bit sentimental, isn’t it? Fond farewells? Don’t go in for that, remember?” 

“Didn’t go in for friends, either.” Before Baker Street and blogs; before enemies and adventures; assassins and vows made once and forever. “Then I met you.” Sherlock’s eyes are heavy. “The very best of times.”

"They were, mate. They truly were." 

When he opens them again, John is not there.

His vision blurs. It is difficult to focus. Spots swim in against the darkness: reds and yellows and blues. Cherry. Marigold. Forget-me-not.

 _Almost there, little brother. Almost there, now._

With effort, he lifts his eyes to the clear night. In another year, the Caucasus would be warmer and the cold less dangerous. He might have fared better then. At present, late spring snow flutters off black-green pines. Beyond their spiky, reaching branches shines a clear, starry night sparkling with a million pinpricks of light. Light that belongs to time beyond all human memory, light that will outshine all one could hope to dream. 

_Thought you didn’t care?_

“Doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate.” 

Truer than he would like to admit. And of so, _so_ very many things. 

He allows himself in these, his final, fleeting moments, to consider the road not taken. A glimpse into a life he might have lived had he been a different man, one capable of different choices leading him to a different end. He pictures brown eyes that are teary with laughter instead of hurt; experiments conducted in partnership rather than out of silent, searching obligation; colorful jumpers over fresh cadavers; dull holidays made less so; dancing. It might have been different. Something that amounted to more than insults and secrets. Something to outshine all the longing, the loneliness, the many gray years of lost time. The fault is only his own. 

She had known. Just as he had known she would. And that expectation of her knowing was, perhaps, he admits, the very reason why he had to see her. So she would know, _truly_ , that this mission was not like the last. For her to hear _exile_ and know it meant _death _. That he could not—would not—cheat it this time.__

She perches on his right side. “Bad day, was it?” Molly asks. 

“It was,” he manages, “absolute murder.” 

She snorts. Runs her fingers through his hair. “It usually is, with you.” 

He presses his fingers to his left wrist, feeling his pulse swing, wildly erratic. “I don’t think you can help me this time, Molly,” he says. 

"Don’t you know by now? I will always help you, Sherlock Holmes. Especially now. Keep that on tight.” He grits his teeth, pulling the belt tighter around his leg whilst simultaneously trying to keep pressure on the gunshot wound to his thigh. A pain goes through him. Not his leg, nor his ribs or the hard-to-breatheness in his lungs. The bright agony of the bullet seems to have dulled to a hot, muted throbbing. “Am I controlling the pain, or is this just what dying is like?” 

“I wouldn’t know. My patients aren’t usually terribly chatty.” 

“Don’t make jokes, Molly.” 

She cracks a grin, but it is not happy. “Oh, I think I will.” 

“I am sorry.” 

“What for?” 

“Everything.” 

“Please don’t be. You know how I would hate that. I’d rather you died thinking of all the good you did. Of all the friends who loved you. Don’t dwell on old hurts.” 

He looks up. “I am dying, then.” 

Molly’s eyes flicker over him, cataloguing the damage. “There is a bullet wound in your right quadricep. Probably the femoral artery has been nicked, judging by your pallor, the location, rate of blood flow. But that’s not the worse of it. The worst of it is the broken rib that’s perforated your lung. Hemothorax. That’s why it’s getting harder to breath. You’re slowly drowning. You’ve also a head injury. Concussion if you’re lucky; brain injury if you’re not. Your sense of reality is slipping. But then, you knew that, because I’m not really here, am I?” 

He hates how perfectly his failing mind is able to conjure her sad-beautiful smile. “Yes, Sherlock. You are dying.” 

“And you cannot save me.” 

“Not this time.” 

“My subconscious admits defeat. Reports of my ego have been greatly exaggerated, apparently.” He swallows. The black spots, the pinwheeling colors spiral through the heavenly night sky. “Molly Hooper. I wish you were here.” 

Molly smiles, kneeling before him. “I do, too.” She places her hand on his face, and he leans into the comfort of it. He no longer feels cold. 

“I meant it, you know.” 

“Meant what?” 

“What I said. Before I left.” 

“I know you did.” 

A truth so precious he’d guarded it to the end, hiding it from all the world—and from himself most of all. His last confession, signed with a single kiss that, in the moment it was born, was already too late. 

His eyes are so heavy. Rest. Sleep. 

_Time to go, little brother._

_Must I?_

_You must. I did warn you. All hearts are broken. All lives must end._

“Sherlock?” Her voice is muted, like sound coming through water. Words are hard to shape, but he tries. For Molly, he will always try. He chokes her name a final time. 

“I won’t leave. I promise.” She squeezes his hand. 

_Thank you_ , he wants to say, and wants to be comforted, too, but the words will not come. His hands fall to the cold ground. Molly, John—they are not here. They are a world away, in a life he will never again see. 

Thoughts slip away from Sherlock Holmes like blood through his fingers. 

The pebbled scree beneath his hands gives way until he feels no more. 

The low roar of wind through the trees grows quiet. 

A night sky bright with pinwheeling colors fades. 

He is alone. 

Always. 

There is only darkness. 

__

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_..._

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__And sound._ _

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__

__

__Slowly, the shadows shift. Resolve into something warmer, brighter._ _

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__

__

__A voice speaks. A voice he had not expected to hear ever again._ _

__“Welcome back, brother mine.”_ _


End file.
